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How a snail’s eye may lead to cure for human blindness
How a snail’s eye may lead to cure for human blindness
Story reported from The Times 7th August written by Rhys Blakely, Science Editor
The golden apple snail has powerful regenerative abilities — and its eyes share many anatomical features with ours
The golden apple snail is a freshwater species with the remarkable ability to regrow an entire eye — prompting scientists to ask whether it could one day inspire better treatments for sight loss.
A study published in Nature Communications has, for the first time, revealed apple snails and human eyes share many anatomical features.
A team led by Alice Accorsi, a biologist at the University of California, Davis, found that the snail’s eyes, like ours, have a camera-like structure with a lens, a retina and an optic nerve. Crucially, they also appear to use many of the same genes thought to be responsible for eye development in humans.
